Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections.
The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to about $1 trillion.
this brings the cost to over $1Trillion for Obamacare
The Congressional Budget Office expects the federal agencies to spend $10 billion to $20 billion over 10 years on administrative costs to implement the overhaul. The CBO expects Congress to spend an additional $105 billion over 10 years to fund discretionary programs in the overhaul.
The CBO released the estimates in response to a request from California Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Lewis said the inquiry was filed before the House voted on the bill.
“[L]arge sums of discretionary spending in both the House and Senate versions of the health care reform bills have not yet been included in estimates by the CBO, rendering it impossible to make informed decisions regarding the outcome of this legislation,” Lewis wrote in a February letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to postpone votes until the discretionary spending analysis was complete.
Read More: By JENNIFER HABERKORN, Politico
Tags: $115 Billion, Barack Obama, Healthcare reform, ObamacareWith Democrats hurtling toward a scheduled Sunday vote on national health care legislation, Washington is already starting to speculate on the political ramifications of its passage.
The latest Gallup poll suggests that President Obama’s drive to jam the unpopular bill through Congress is taking its toll. For the first time of his presidency, more people disapprove of Obama’s performance (48 percent) than approve (46 percent).
Obamacare is destined to fail
Despite the polling numbers, the White House publicly insists that once Americans understand what’s in the bill, they’ll come to like it and over time will embrace it just like Social Security and Medicare. Yet the reverse is more likely to be true. Once Americans confront the consequences of this government takeover of the health care system, it will only become more unpopular.
When he set out to overhaul the nation’s health care system, Obama faced a basic problem in selling his proposals: roughly 85 percent of Americans have health insurance and are generally satisfied with their personal care. So as a result, he was forced to make a series of bold claims. He has argued that without his brand of health care legislation, premiums would spiral out of control; health care spending would eat up more than a fifth of our economy; and our entitlement crisis would cripple the federal government. Meanwhile, he’s claimed that his plan would expand coverage while reducing deficits and improving quality of care. And of course, none of these revolutionary changes would interfere in any way with people who like the coverage they have.
Read More: By Philip Klein, American Spectator
Tags: Barack Obama, Fail, Healthcare reformPresident Barack Obama released a $950 billion health care reform proposal Monday aimed at pleasing the warring wings of his own party and bringing along skeptical voters, in part by including a provision to put off an unpopular tax on high-cost health insurance plans until 2018.
I will raise taxes on future generations to pay for your healthcare
One notable absence in Obama’s plan – a public health insurance option, a favorite of liberals, but a provision that became the most controversial part of the congressional debate on reform. Obama has long said he would sign a bill without it, and his own legislation confirms that.
Obama released his bill just days before Thursday’s bipartisan health care summit, and by doing so, he hoped to set the agenda for the meeting – making his own bill the starting point for any discussions, and trying to force Republicans to come to the table with their own plan.
The plan appears designed to allay liberals in the House while not going too far in a way that would alienate Senate moderates. For example, it vastly scales back the tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans, which will please liberal Democrats, but by leaving out the public option, hopes to win over moderates.
Read More: By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico
Tags: Barack Obama, future generations, Healthcare reform, Raise TaxesThough reeling from a political body blow, House Democrats rejected the quickest fix to their health care dilemma Thursday and signaled that any agreement on President Barack Obama’s signature issue will come slowly, if at all.
The Scott Brown election has sent a message so clear even these three can’t ignore it
Democrats weighed a handful of difficult options as they continued to absorb Republican Scott Brown’s election to the Massachusetts Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy. Several said Obama must forcefully help them find a way to avoid the humiliation of enacting no bill, and they urged him to do so quickly, to put the painful process behind them.
House leaders said they could not pass a Senate-approved bill, standing by itself, because of objections from liberals and moderates alike. Such a move could have settled the matter, because it would not have required further Senate action. Brown’s stunning victory restored the GOP’s power to block bills with Senate filibusters.
Democratic leaders weighed two main options, both problematic. The first would require congressional Democrats to muscle their way past stiff GOP objections despite warning signs from Massachusetts voters and worries about next November’s elections.
Read More: By CHARLES BABINGTON, AP
Tags: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Healthcare reform, Nancy PelosiThe House version of ObamaCare is more destructive than the Senate version, though that’s like comparing Krakatoa and Mount Vesuvius. At any rate, one of the main Democrat-on-Democrat bouts in their secret nonconference committee turns on who will regulate the insurance industry to within an inch of its commercial life.
Obamacare will cut down on choices
Both bills blow up the individual and small-business insurance markets, to be replaced with new "exchanges" in which people can buy heavily subsidized coverage and insurers will be told what rates they can charge consumers and what benefits they must cover. The Senate would create 50 exchanges and leave the regulation to state insurance commissioners, who would have to follow minimum (or rather, maximum) standards. The House prefers one national exchange and a new federal regulator called the Health Choices Administration.
The sole purpose of this office is to obliterate health choices: What really will be universal about "universal coverage" is that all consumers will have to buy essentially one standard product that Washington decides is best. Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a flavor of what she expected of the new health choices commissioner when she said at a recent press conference that insurance companies "will be crying out for a public option."
The irony is that the same Democrats who have spent years opposing the regulatory competition that would come from allowing interstate insurance sales are now suddenly fine with national policies. As long as they’re the ones running the show.
Read More: WSJ
Tags: Barack Obama, Choices, Czar, Healthcare reformHe is provocative in insisting on an outstretched hand, where others only see animosity.
Wow!
His tangible results in the short time that he has been active – are few and far between. His greatest results have been created with words and speeches – words that remain in the consciousness of their audience and have long-term effects.
He comes from humble beginnings and defends the weak and vulnerable, because he can identify himself with their conditions.
And no we are not thinking of Jesus Christ, whose birthday has just been celebrated – - but rather the President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama.
For some time now, comparisons between the two have been a tool of cynical opinion that quickly became fatigued of the rapture that Obama instilled prior to and after the presidential election last year.
From the start, Obama’s critics have claimed that his supporters have idolised him as a saviour, thus attempting to dismantle the concrete hope that Obama has represented for most Americans.
If such a comparison were to be made, it would, of course, inevitably be to Obama’s advantage.
Read More: Politiken
Tags: Greater than Jesus, Healthcare reform, Obama, Praise for ObamaThe UK Daily Mail
Barack Obama’s plans to reform American healthcare been dealt a massive blow after Democrats in the Senate appear to have dropped plans for an NHS-style insurance scheme in the U.S.
Plans for the government-run health insurance scheme seem to have been dropped last night in a bid to ease reform through Washington.
Under a deal stuck late yesterday, the so-called public option part of proposed legislation was jettisoned, in favour of a non-profit private alternative overseen by a federal agency.
Mr Obama’s hopes for a public option dominated domestic politics in America over the summer, turning healthcare into a massive priority – almost bigger than the economy.
His popularity plunged over the issue as violence broke out in town hall meetings across the country on the subject.
The compromise will disappoint advocates of having a government-run scheme in place to compete with insurers and drive down costs.
Tags: Barack Obama, Dropped from Bill, Healthcare reform, Public OptionSenior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was “absolutely confident” he’ll be able to sign one by then.
“Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go,” a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.
This may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where officials from the president on down have repeatedly said the health care bill would be signed into law by the end of the year.
Obamacare will make healthcare more expensive, not less
“I am absolutely confident that we are going to get health care done by the end of this year, and Nancy Pelosi is just as confident,” Obama said Oct. 27 at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may still be confident — and her spokesman Brendan Daly said today, “We are going to get our part done” — but the reason for the delay can be found in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to release the bill he eventually plans to bring to the Senate floor. Reid is still waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to come up with an estimated cost of several possible variations of his bill before deciding which one to introduce in the Senate.
Read More: By JONATHAN KARL, ABC News
Tags: Barack Obama, Healthcare reform, Not this year, ObamacareHouse Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol.
Boehner: says this is 1,990 pages of bureaucracy, the bill will cost $2.2 Million per word
The audience at the crowded press conference included Hill staffers, union workers, health care providers and students, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thanked them for attending.
Mrs. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders announced the chamber’s long-awaited version of a health care overhaul, which would expand insurance coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans, costing less than $900 billion over 10 years.
Read More: By Kara Rowland, Washington Times
Tags: Democrats, Healthcare reform, In secret, Obamacare, pelosicare
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